‘The Last Showgirl’ review: Pamela Anderson’s firecracker second act starts here

Shelly Gardner (Pamela Anderson) is a Vegas showgirl of a certain age who built her career on beauty and an unwavering commitment to her art form. Others may sneer at Le Razzle Dazzle, the old-school revue she stars in, but Shelly proudly reminds them it’s part of a “tradition passed down from France, so it’s classy”.

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Screenwriter Kate Gersten adapted The Last Showgirl from Body Of Work, her own stage play based on the final days of a Jubilee!, a long-running Vegas revue that closed in 2016. She and director Gia Coppola – niece of Sophia, granddaughter of Francis Ford – tell this fictional story with tremendous empathy, but there’s no corny redemption arc for Shelly.

Floored by Le Razzle Dazzle’s imminent demise, she reaches out to her semi-estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), whom she gave up 20 years earlier to focus on her career. There are glimmers of a rapprochement but Shelly has too many issues of her own and Hannah still harbours resentment. When she finally sees Le Razzle Dazzle, she tells Shelly that she found the show sad and basic. The look on Shelly’s face is almost unbearable.

Shelly also refuses to become a surrogate mother to younger dancers Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), even though they both look up to her. Played with warmth and authenticity by Anderson, who gives a revelatory performance that deserves to kick start her career’s second (or is that third?) act, Shelly is single-minded, mildly deluded and a woman out of time.

When she auditions for a role in a newer, flashier Vegas show, she claims she’s only 42, but gives herself away by performing a dated routine to Pat Benatar’s ’80s banger ‘Shadows Of The Night’. The curt feedback she receives from a testy director (Jason Schwartzman, Coppola’s second cousin) is painfully poignant.

Coppola’s handling of this intimate story can be meandering and disparate. Jamie Lee Curtis delivers a ferocious performance as Annette, a former showgirl now scraping by a cocktail waitress, but it’s a big swing in a film where everyone else plays it small.

But this doesn’t stop The Last Showgirl from being evocative – cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw really captures the strip’s faded glamour – and very moving. It’s a rich character study that doesn’t sugarcoat the ageism Shelly faces, but also grants her a defiant sense of agency. Whatever you think of her choices, she’s lived life on her own terms.